Language and orthography as irrelevant features in colour-word and picture-word stroop interference

Based on evidence that Chinese yields more interference than English, Biederman and Tsao (1979) have suggested that the processes involved in reading Chinese are more similar to those involved in colour naming than are the processes involved in reading English. In three experiments conducted to evaluate the empirical foundation for this hypothesis it was found that: (1) Chinese yielded less interference than English (and French) in between-subjects comparisons involving Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals or English-French bilinguals; (2) Chinese print did not yield more interference than English print in within-subjects comparisons involving the orthogonal combination of print language (Chinese or English) and naming language (Chinese or English) among Chinese-English bilinguals; and (3) compared with syntactic category, both language and orthography were relatively impotent variables in the object naming version of the Stroop task.     

Duties When an Anonymous Student Health Survey Finds a Hot Spot of Suicidality

Abstract

Public health agencies regularly survey randomly selected anonymous students to track drug use, sexual activities, and other risk behaviors. Students are unidentifiable, but a recent project that included school-level analysis discovered a school with alarmingly prevalent student suicidality. Given confidentiality protocols typical of surveillance, the surveyors were uncertain whether and how to intervene. We searched literature for duties to warn at-risk groups discovered during public health surveillance, but we found no directly applicable guidance or cases. Reasoning by analogy, we conclude that surveyors should contact the school’s leaders to call attention to its outlier status, but public warning is unwarranted. However, such an ad hoc decision to issue a warning, even if only to school leaders, raises significant practical, legal and ethical issues. National public health and education associations should produce guidance that clarifies ethical and legal duties owed to schools and students involved in population health-risk surveillance.     

Identification of Nearly Fatal Suicide Attempts: Self-Inflicted Injury Severity Form

The Self-inflicted Injury Severity Form (SIISF) was developed as an epidemiological research tool for identifying individuals in hospital emergency departments who have life-threatening self-inflicted injuries. Data were collected from 715 patients with self-inflicted injuries in two large hospitals. In 295 of these cases, a second set of data was independently collected for assessment of interrater reliability. Validity was assessed by comparing the SIISF results with simultaneously collected Risk—Rescue Ratings. Assessment of interrater reliability found that only 2.4% of physicians disagreed on the suicide method used. The kappa statistic for method used was .94, indicating excellent agreement. The SIISF was found to distinguish between severe and less severe injuries. Thus, it appears to provide a simple method to distinguish patients who have life-threatening self-inflicted injuries.